webjoke.de

Debugging Drupal involves using tools to display errors, inspect variables, and step through code. Knowing these techniques is crucial for troubleshooting issues like the White Screen of Death (WSOD) and can prevent hours of frustration.

The video above covers basic error display configuration, advanced debugging with Xdebug, and practical tools like Devel, WebProfiler, and Ignition for productive Drupal development.

Conversational AI is now a must-have for modern web experiences, and Drupal developers have powerful tools at their disposal. This curated list from The DropTimes showcases 12 standout modules that make it easy to integrate AI-driven chatbots into Drupal sites. Whether you need offline AI, OpenAI integration, multilingual support, or node-specific conversations, these modules offer solutions for a wide range of use

How We Use AI at Palantir demet Thu, 10/23/2025 - 13:42

Building an AI policy that’s rooted in practical experience, not hype

As generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Claude have become ubiquitous in our workplaces, many organizations are still struggling with how to adopt them effectively. Some companies are telling employees they need to use AI as much as possible, but aren't providing clarity and guardrails on how to do so. Others avoid AI tools entirely, worried about the risks and uncertainties around their use.

The reality, as commentator Anil Dash recently observed, is that most people who work in technology have a very consistent view on AI:

"Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value."

As a result, the practical voices asking "how do we use this responsibly in our actual work?" are drowned out and many organizations end up without any clear guidance about where AI adds value and where it doesn't. This can create an uneven playing field where some workers are using AI without any guardrails, while others stay away completely, avoiding use cases that might save time and money.

How do you create an AI workplace policy?

At Palantir, we found ourselves in this position last year. As a digital strategy and development consultancy, we're naturally curious about new technologies and how they might benefit our clients. Several of our team members had been experimenting with AI tools for some time, looking for ways they might improve the quality of our work.

As we started using these tools more frequently, however, the questions multiplied faster than answers:

• Which AI tools were okay to use and which weren't?
• How should we establish human oversight and disclosure requirements?
• What about intellectual property concerns with AI-generated content?
• How do we maintain quality standards when AI is involved in our deliverables?
• How do we ensure data privacy and security?
• How do we address AI's environmental footprint?
• What are our obligations under emerging AI regulations?

Many members of our team were excited about AI's potential, but needed clear direction and guardrails to harness that enthusiasm safely and effectively. More importantly, we needed to level the playing field-creating an environment where everyone felt empowered to use AI tools appropriately rather than some people forging ahead while others held back out of uncertainty.

We wanted to treat AI like a normal technology. That meant applying the same thoughtful evaluation, risk assessment, and implementation practices we'd use for any other tool-without the extremes of either blind enthusiasm or complete avoidance.

The stakes are higher than you think

Before diving into our solution, it's worth understanding why this matters so much. Without proper guidelines, the risks extend far beyond individual productivity gains or losses. Teams operating without AI policies face several serious challenges:

• Data breaches and privacy violations can happen when sensitive information gets inadvertently shared with third-party AI services.
• Quality issues and "workslop" emerge when team members generate low-quality AI content and pass it along to colleagues, creating more work than it saves.
• Client trust issues arise when AI usage isn't properly disclosed or when it conflicts with client expectations or policies.
• Legal complications are increasingly likely as new regulations around AI in the workplace take effect.
• Inconsistent practices and cultural problems develop when different team members use AI tools differently, with varying levels of oversight and review.
• Environmental and ethical concerns go unaddressed when organizations adopt AI without considering sustainability commitments or how systems use content without creator consent.

We realized that creating our own AI policy wasn't just a nice-to-have-it was essential for building a workplace culture where AI use could be transparent, responsible, and valuable for everyone. We needed a framework that would create buy-in across the organization while prioritizing quality, safety, and security.

We needed to be part of the reasonable majority: treating AI as a normal technology, subject to thoughtful evaluation and appropriate controls, focused on legitimate uses rather than hype.

The question wasn't whether we needed an AI policy. The question was how to build one that actually worked.

Establishing an AI Working Group

One of our first realizations was that creating an effective AI policy couldn't be a solo effort or even a small, homogeneous group project. AI touches every part of how we work-from the code our developers write to the strategies our consultants craft to the way our project managers coordinate client relationships. If we wanted a policy that would actually be useful (and used), we needed perspectives from across the organization.

We decided to formalize our approach by creating an AI Policy Working Group. This wasn't just a committee-it was a cross-functional team with a specific charter: drafting policy for the safe, private, secure, and ethical use of AI at Palantir.net.

The working group structure gave us several advantages. It provided legitimacy and resources for the work, created clear accountability, and ensured that policy development was treated as a priority rather than a side project. Most importantly, it established a framework that could continue beyond the initial policy creation to handle ongoing updates and new challenges.

We started by identifying team members who had two crucial qualities: genuine interest in AI tools and expertise in different domains of our work. These weren't necessarily the most technical people or the biggest AI enthusiasts. Instead, we looked for people who could bridge the gap between AI capabilities and real work requirements.

A project manager who'd been using AI to draft client communications had different insights than a developer using it for code review, and both perspectives were essential. We needed people who understood not just what AI could do, but how it fit into our actual workflows and client relationships. We also needed to include members of our operations and leadership teams who could speak to compliance and data safety concerns.

Identifying key themes and establishing accountability

Our discovery process started with structured interviews with key stakeholders across the organization. We talked to leadership, project managers, and team members who were already using AI tools in their work. The goal wasn't to gather opinions about AI in general, but to understand specific challenges, concerns, and requirements our policy would need to address.

Several clear themes emerged from these discovery interviews, and for each one, we identified who would be responsible for implementation:

1. Human accountability must remain paramount

There was strong consensus that regardless of how AI was used, humans needed to remain fully accountable for the quality and outcomes of their work. AI should be used to enhance human capabilities, not replace human judgment.

Who owns this: Project teams are responsible for ensuring AI tools are used in a way that delivers value and maintains human oversight. Team members remain fully accountable for the quality, substantial completion, and outcome of AI-assisted work-treating AI assistance similarly to collaborating with another team member.

2. Data privacy and security are non-negotiable

Team members needed clear guidance about what data could and couldn't be shared with AI tools. We also needed to have clear rules ensuring client data would never be used to train third-party AI tools.

Who owns this: Our Systems & Infrastructure team establishes the process for evaluating new AI tools, decides which ones are approved for use, and assesses ongoing security and compliance. They conduct vendor assessments with robust SLAs and ensure tools don't use company or client data to train their models.

3. Transparency with clients is essential

Some of our clients already had their own AI policies that restricted or required disclosure of AI use. Others were curious about how we were leveraging AI for their benefit. We needed clear protocols to navigate these conversations.

Who owns this: Project teams ensure tools are used in a way that is consistent with client policy requirements and restrictions. They're responsible for proactively communicating with clients (and each other) how AI is being used on their projects, reviewing client-specific AI policies, and documenting AI usage in workflows.

4. We need practical "do's and don'ts"

Team members wanted concrete, actionable guidance. They didn't need us to solve the big philosophical questions about AI's role in society-they needed to know whether it was okay to use ChatGPT to help draft a project proposal, or how to disclose AI usage in a client report.

Who owns this: The AI Working Group provides advice, consultation, and support to team members, helping translate policy into practical day-to-day decisions. Our Operations team navigates regulatory requirements, liability questions, and evolving legal frameworks, including avoiding discriminatory use of AI in employment decisions and performance evaluations.

Making it work in practice

The key to our working group's effectiveness was balancing structure with flexibility. We had regular check-ins and clear deliverables, but we also made space for organic collaboration and iteration. People could contribute according to their expertise and availability without feeling overwhelmed.

We also made the process transparent from the beginning, using shared documents and collaborative spaces so anyone could see our progress and thinking. This transparency proved valuable later when we moved to company-wide review and adoption. And of course, we used AI tools throughout the policy development process to help synthesize team member inputs and iterate on language more efficiently.

Most importantly, we kept the focus practical rather than philosophical. While we certainly discussed the broader implications of AI, our primary goal was creating something our colleagues could actually use in their daily work.

The results

After releasing a draft for comment and review in December 2024, we officially implemented our Generative AI Usage Policy in January of this year. Since then we've developed new product and service offerings as part of an internal "skunkworks" program, including our custom AI content auditing tool that cuts the time and cost of content audits by 30-50%. We have also implemented Onyx as an internal tool that brings together internal information from sources that were currently locked in their own silos.

Our team members regularly use company-approved AI tools like Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and Warp to assist with research, code development, drafting documentation, and debugging. Our code is not written by AI-rather, AI assists developers by suggesting code completions, helping identify bugs, and accelerating routine tasks, while humans make all architectural decisions, conduct peer reviews, ensure security compliance, and maintain accountability for quality. We treat AI assistance similarly to collaborating with another team member: the human remains fully responsible for the work product's accuracy, security, and appropriateness.

As a company that does a lot of work with Drupal, we've also been closely following the work of the Drupal AI Initiative to build tools that empower teams to create intelligent experiences with complete oversight of AI operations. With over 290 AI modules already available and integrations spanning 21 major providers, Drupal is already a leading platform for AI integration. At DrupalCon Vienna last week, Drupal project lead Dries Buytaert shared his vision for Drupal as a leading AI site-building platform.

In some cases, AI agents are already handling routine quality assurance tasks like ensuring alt text completeness, validating heading hierarchies, checking reading levels, and monitoring brand consistency. Looking forward, we see AI playing increasingly sophisticated roles in website management and optimization.

What we learned

By treating AI as a normal technology rather than either a silver bullet or an existential threat, we found our way to a middle ground that we believe more accurately reflects AI's capabilities and challenges. Our working group didn't just produce a policy document-it created organizational buy-in, practical guidance that teams actually use, and a framework that continues to evolve as the technology changes.

We've made our policy template available on GitHub as a starting point, but the real value isn't in copying our specific rules-it's in building your own cross-functional working group, conducting discovery with your stakeholders, and creating guidelines that reflect your organization's values and needs. The goal isn't to have perfect answers to every AI question. The goal is to create an environment where your team can focus on legitimate uses that add value, with clear guidance on how to do so safely, ethically, and effectively.

This post was written with the assistance of Anthropic Claude. The cover image was generated by Adobe Firefly.

Adaptive’s Head of UX, Steve Allen, describes his first DrupalCon experience as 'insightful, exciting and exhausting', highlighting innovations in Drupal CMS, Canvas, and AI, along with a renewed commitment to community contribution.

Planning to attend the Mautic World Conference 2025? Use exclusive promo codes from The Drop Times to get 30% off in-person tickets and 40% off the virtual event. Apply the codes while booking and join the global Mautic community at a reduced rate.

Mautic World Conference lands in London with keynotes, workshops, and a community day focused on the future of marketing automation. Hear from project lead Ruth Cheesley, explore new features in Mautic 7, and connect with the global Mautic community.

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

In my DrupalCon Vienna keynote, I talk about how Drupal is adapting to an AI-driven web through AI-enabled visual editing, site templates, autonomous agents, and workflow orchestration.

The web is changing fast. AI now writes content, builds web pages, and answers questions directly, often bypassing websites entirely.

People often wonder what this means for Drupal, so at DrupalCon Vienna, I tackled this head-on. My message was simple: AI is the storm, but it's also the way through it. Instead of fighting AI, we're leaning into it.

My keynote focused on how Drupal is evolving across four product areas. We're making it easier to get started with Site Templates, enabling visual site building through Drupal Canvas, accelerating development with AI assistance, and exploring complex workflows with new orchestration tools.

If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (62 MB).

Vienna felt like a turning point. People could see the pieces coming together. Drupal is finding its footing in the AI era, leading in AI innovation, and ready to help shape what comes next for the web.

Growing Drupal with Site Templates

One of the most important ways to grow Drupal is to make it easier and faster to build new sites. We began that work with Recipes, a way to quickly add common features to a site. Recipes help people go from idea to a website in hours instead of days.

At DrupalCon Vienna, I talked about the next step in that journey: our first Site Template. Site Templates build on Recipes and also include a complete design with layouts, visual style, and sample content. The result is that you can go from a new Drupal install to a fully working website in minutes. It will be the easiest way yet to get started with Drupal.

Next, we plan to introduce more Site Templates and launch a Site Template Marketplace where anyone can discover, share, and build on templates for different use cases.

A new visual editing experience

At DrupalCon Vienna, the energy around Drupal Canvas was infectious. Some even called it "CanvasCon". Drupal Canvas sessions were often standing room only, just like the Drupal AI sessions.

I first showed an early version of Drupal Canvas at DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, when we launched Drupal's Starshot initiative. The progress we've made in just one year is remarkable. My keynote showed parts of Drupal Canvas in action, but for a deeper dive, I recommend watching this breakout session.

Version 1.0 of Drupal Canvas is scheduled for November 2025. Starting in January 2026, it will become the default page builder in Drupal CMS 2.0. After more than 15 months of development and countless contributors working to make Drupal easier for everyone, it's hard to believe we're almost there. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for how people create with Drupal.

What excites me most is what this solves. For years, building pages in Drupal required technical expertise. Drupal Canvas gives end-users a visual page builder that is both more powerful and easy to use. Plus, it supports React, which means front-end developers can contribute using skills they already have.

Drupal's accidental AI advantage

Every content management system faces defining moments. For Drupal, one came with the release of Drupal 8. We rebuilt Drupal from the ground up, adopting modern design patterns and improving configuration management, versioning, workflows, and more.

The transition was hard, but here is the surprising part: ten years later those decisions gave Drupal an unexpected advantage in today's AI-driven web. The architecture we created is exactly what AI systems need today. When AI modifies content, you need version control to roll back mistakes. When it builds pages, you need structured data, permissions, and workflows. Drupal already has those capabilities.

For years, Drupal prioritized flexibility and robustness while other platforms focused on ease of use. What once felt like extra complexity now makes perfect sense. Drupal has quietly become one of the most AI-ready platforms available.

AI is the storm, and the way through the storm

As I said in my keynote: "Some days AI terrifies me. An hour later it excites me. By the evening, I'm tired of hearing about it.". Still, we can't ignore AI.

I first introduced AI as part of Starshot. Five months ago, it became its own dedicated track with the launch of the Drupal AI initiative. Since then, twenty two agencies have backed it with funding and contributors, together contributing over one million dollars. This is the largest fundraising effort in Drupal's history.

The initiative is already producing impressive results. At DrupalCon Vienna, we released Drupal AI version 1.2, a major step forward for the initiative.

In my keynote, I also demonstrated three new AI capabilities:

1. AI-powered page building: Drupal AI can now generate complete, designed pages in minutes using a component-based design system in Drupal Canvas. What site builders used to build in hours now happens in minutes while maintaining your site's structure and style.
2. Context Control Center: Teams can define brand voice, target audiences, and key messages from a single UI. All AI agents draw from this source of truth.
3. Autonomous agents: When you update information in the Context Control Center, such as a product price or company statistic, agents automatically find every instance throughout your site and propose updates. You review and approve changes before they go live.

Orchestration as a path to explore

Earlier this year, I wrote about the great digital agency unbundling. As AI automates more technical work, agencies need to evolve their business models and find new ways to create value.

One promising direction is orchestration: building systems and workflows that connect AI agents, content platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools into intelligent, automated workflows. I think of it as DXP 2.0.

Most organizations have complex marketing technology stacks. Connecting all the systems in their stack often requires custom code or repetitive manual tasks. This integration work can be time-consuming and hard to maintain.

Modern orchestration tools solve this by automating how information flows between systems. Instead of writing custom code, you can use no-code tools to define workflows that trigger automatically. When someone fills out a form, the system creates a CRM contact, sends a welcome email, and notifies your team without any manual work.

In my keynote, I showed how ECA and ActivePieces can work together. Jürgen Haas, who created ECA, and I collaborated on this integration. ECA lets you define automations inside Drupal using events, conditions, and actions. ActivePieces is an open source automation platform similar to Zapier or n8n.

This approach allows us to build user experiences that are not only better and smarter, but also positions Drupal to benefit from AI innovation happening across the broader ecosystem. The idea resonated in Vienna. People approached me enthusiastically with related projects and demos, including tools like Flowdrop or Drupal's MCP module.

Between now and DrupalCon Chicago, we're inviting the community to explore and expand on this work. Join us in #orchestration on Drupal Slack, test the new Orchestration module, connect more automation platforms, or help improve ECA. If this direction proves valuable, we'll share what we learned at DrupalCon Chicago.

Building the future together

At DrupalCon Vienna, I felt something shift. Sessions were packed. People were excited about Site Templates and the Marketplace. Drupal Canvas drew huge crowds, and even more agencies signed up to join the Drupal AI initiative. During contribution day, more people than usual showed up looking for ways to help.

That energy in Vienna reflected something bigger. AI is changing how people use the web and how we build for it. It can feel threatening, and it can feel full of possibility, but what became clear in Vienna is that Drupal is well positioned at this inflection point, with both momentum and direction.

What makes this moment special is how the community is responding with focus and collaboration. We are approaching it as a much more coordinated effort, while still leaving room for experimentation.

Vienna showed me that the Drupal community is ready to take this on together. We have navigated uncharted territory before, but this time there is a boldness and unity I have not seen in years. That is the way through the storm. I am proud to be part of it.

I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my presentation and demos a success. A special thank you to Adam G-H, Aidan Foster, ASH Sullivan, Bálint Kléri, Cristina Chumillas, Elliott Mower, Emma Horrell, Gábor Hojtsy, Gurwinder Antal, James Abrahams, Jurgen Haas, Kristen Pol, Lauri Eskola, Marcus Johansson, Martin Anderson-Clutz, Pamela Barone, Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, and Witze Van der Straeten. Many others contributed indirectly to make this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, please reach out.

The web is changing fast. AI now writes content, builds web pages, and answers questions directly, often bypassing websites entirely.

People often wonder what this means for Drupal, so at DrupalCon Vienna, I tackled this head-on. My message was simple: AI is the storm, but it's also the way through it. Instead of fighting AI, we're leaning into it.

My keynote focused on how Drupal is evolving across four product areas. We're making it easier to get started with Site Templates, enabling visual site building through Drupal Canvas, accelerating development with AI assistance, and exploring complex workflows with new orchestration tools.

If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (62 MB).

Vienna felt like a turning point. People could see the pieces coming together. Drupal is finding its footing in the AI era, leading in AI innovation, and ready to help shape what comes next for the web.

Growing Drupal with Site Templates

One of the most important ways to grow Drupal is to make it easier and faster to build new sites. We began that work with Recipes, a way to quickly add common features to a site. Recipes help people go from idea to a website in hours instead of days.

At DrupalCon Vienna, I talked about the next step in that journey: our first Site Template. Site Templates build on Recipes and also include a complete design with layouts, visual style, and sample content. The result is that you can go from a new Drupal install to a fully working website in minutes. It will be the easiest way yet to get started with Drupal.

Next, we plan to introduce more Site Templates and launch a Site Template Marketplace where anyone can discover, share, and build on templates for different use cases.

A new visual editing experience

At DrupalCon Vienna, the energy around Drupal Canvas was infectious. Some even called it "CanvasCon". Drupal Canvas sessions were often standing room only, just like the Drupal AI sessions.

I first showed an early version of Drupal Canvas at DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, when we launched Drupal's Starshot initiative. The progress we've made in just one year is remarkable. My keynote showed parts of Drupal Canvas in action, but for a deeper dive, I recommend watching this breakout session.

Version 1.0 of Drupal Canvas is scheduled for November 2025. Starting in January 2026, it will become the default page builder in Drupal CMS 2.0. After more than 15 months of development and countless contributors working to make Drupal easier for everyone, it's hard to believe we're almost there. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for how people create with Drupal.

What excites me most is what this solves. For years, building pages in Drupal required technical expertise. Drupal Canvas gives end-users a visual page builder that is both more powerful and easy to use. Plus, it supports React, which means front-end developers can contribute using skills they already have.

Drupal's accidental AI advantage

Every content management system faces defining moments. For Drupal, one came with the release of Drupal 8. We rebuilt Drupal from the ground up, adopting modern design patterns and improving configuration management, versioning, workflows, and more.

The transition was hard, but here is the surprising part: ten years later those decisions gave Drupal an unexpected advantage in today's AI-driven web. The architecture we created is exactly what AI systems need today. When AI modifies content, you need version control to roll back mistakes. When it builds pages, you need structured data, permissions, and workflows. Drupal already has those capabilities.

For years, Drupal prioritized flexibility and robustness while other platforms focused on ease of use. What once felt like extra complexity now makes perfect sense. Drupal has quietly become one of the most AI-ready platforms available.

AI is the storm, and the way through the storm

As I said in my keynote: "Some days AI terrifies me. An hour later it excites me. By the evening, I'm tired of hearing about it.". Still, we can't ignore AI.

I first introduced AI as part of Starshot. Five months ago, it became its own dedicated track with the launch of the Drupal AI initiative. Since then, twenty two agencies have backed it with funding and contributors, together contributing over one million dollars. This is the largest fundraising effort in Drupal's history.

The initiative is already producing impressive results. At DrupalCon Vienna, we released Drupal AI version 1.2, a major step forward for the initiative.

In my keynote, I also demonstrated three new AI capabilities:

1. AI-powered page building: Drupal AI can now generate complete, designed pages in minutes using a component-based design system in Drupal Canvas. What site builders used to build in hours now happens in minutes while maintaining your site's structure and style.
2. Context Control Center: Teams can define brand voice, target audiences, and key messages from a single UI. All AI agents draw from this source of truth.
3. Autonomous agents: When you update information in the Context Control Center, such as a product price or company statistic, agents automatically find every instance throughout your site and propose updates. You review and approve changes before they go live.

Orchestration as a path to explore

Earlier this year, I wrote about the great digital agency unbundling. As AI automates more technical work, agencies need to evolve their business models and find new ways to create value.

One promising direction is orchestration: building systems and workflows that connect AI agents, content platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools into intelligent, automated workflows. I think of it as DXP 2.0.

Most organizations have complex marketing technology stacks. Connecting all the systems in their stack often requires custom code or repetitive manual tasks. This integration work can be time-consuming and hard to maintain.

Modern orchestration tools solve this by automating how information flows between systems. Instead of writing custom code, you can use no-code tools to define workflows that trigger automatically. When someone fills out a form, the system creates a CRM contact, sends a welcome email, and notifies your team without any manual work.

In my keynote, I showed how ECA and ActivePieces can work together. Jürgen Haas, who created ECA, and I collaborated on this integration. ECA lets you define automations inside Drupal using events, conditions, and actions. ActivePieces is an open source automation platform similar to Zapier or n8n.

This approach allows us to build user experiences that are not only better and smarter, but also positions Drupal to benefit from AI innovation happening across the broader ecosystem. The idea resonated in Vienna. People approached me enthusiastically with related projects and demos, including tools like Flowdrop or Drupal's MCP module.

Between now and DrupalCon Chicago, we're inviting the community to explore and expand on this work. Join us in #orchestration on Drupal Slack, test the new Orchestration module, connect more automation platforms, or help improve ECA. If this direction proves valuable, we'll share what we learned at DrupalCon Chicago.

Building the future together

At DrupalCon Vienna, I felt something shift. Sessions were packed. People were excited about Site Templates and the Marketplace. Drupal Canvas drew huge crowds, and even more agencies signed up to join the Drupal AI initiative. During contribution day, more people than usual showed up looking for ways to help.

That energy in Vienna reflected something bigger. AI is changing how people use the web and how we build for it. It can feel threatening, and it can feel full of possibility, but what became clear in Vienna is that Drupal is well positioned at this inflection point, with both momentum and direction.

What makes this moment special is how the community is responding with focus and collaboration. We are approaching it as a much more coordinated effort, while still leaving room for experimentation.

Vienna showed me that the Drupal community is ready to take this on together. We have navigated uncharted territory before, but this time there is a boldness and unity I have not seen in years. That is the way through the storm. I am proud to be part of it.

I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my presentation and demos a success. A special thank you to Adam G-H, Aidan Foster, ASH Sullivan, Bálint Kléri, Cristina Chumillas, Elliott Mower, Emma Horrell, Gábor Hojtsy, Gurwinder Antal, James Abrahams, Jurgen Haas, Kristen Pol, Lauri Eskola, Marcus Johansson, Martin Anderson-Clutz, Pamela Barone, Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, and Witze Van der Straeten. Many others contributed indirectly to make this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, please reach out.

KERN UX—the modular design system defining the German public sector’s UX standards—is entering the Drupal ecosystem through a new community-led initiative. The “KERN UX Drupal Project” kicks off on October 24, aiming to bring platform‑independent, accessibility‑driven design to Drupal theming. The project’s early roadmap focuses on web components, Storybook previews, and frontend reuse, inviting contributors to shape its direction and ensure KERN’s government-grade UX becomes accessible across Drupal-powered websites.

What started as an idea among a couple of people has rapidly expanded into something with global interest. There are now educators teaching Drupal at higher education and universities, which is amazing. It means new people are being introduced to our beloved open source project.

“What if we could open source the teaching materials themselves, and teach others how to teach Drupal?”

A lot has happened since then. People from around the world have been collaborating on the teaching materials created by Hilmar Kári Hallbjörnsson, who is now in his fourth year of teaching Drupal at Reykjavík University. But the idea has grown, it’s become an initiative with the goal of reaching, introducing, and welcoming new Drupal enthusiasts into the community.

Drupal itself is thriving. With Drupal CMS and the AI initiative, the platform has more power and potential than ever before. This enthusiasm is growing both within and beyond the Drupal community. In the context of digital sovereignty, AI, privacy, security, and accessibility, a whole new set of opportunities is emerging for Drupal and open source.

What is the Drupal Open University Initiative?

The Drupal Open University Initiative is a community-driven effort focused on bringing Drupal into academic and other (higher) education environments. Our mission is to introduce students and aspiring developers to the power of Drupal, and to help cultivate the next generation of contributors. Through comprehensive, open-source-based courses, we aim to equip students, educators, and guest lecturers with the knowledge and tools needed to engage with Drupal—and the broader open source ecosystem. Together, we're shaping a future where Drupal continues to grow through the energy of new talent and an increasingly vibrant community.

Why This Matters

Drupal is so much more than just code, it's a thriving ecosystem powered by one of the most dedicated open source communities in the world. But while that community remains strong, its average age is rising, and many young developers never encounter Drupal at all when starting to build their skills. In recent years, we've made significant progress in lowering the barrier to entry: today, it's even possible to build a Drupal site using AI, without writing a single line of code.

“I thought I heard that we won’t need junior devs now that we have generative AI?”

Within the community, there’s a strong desire to teach, guide, and share knowledge. If we can reach students early in their learning journey and spark their interest in Drupal, we have a unique opportunity to foster the next generation of Drupal developers. And by teaching Drupal, we also introduce them to our vibrant and welcoming community, helping them experience the value of contribution from the very beginning.

Who’s involved?

I have tried to find everyone actively mentioned on our Drupal.org project or bi-weekly notes, please let me know when you are missing from this list.

André Angelantoni (aangel), Ben Mullins (bnjmnm), Darren oh (darren-oh), Yan Zhang  (designfitsu), Hilmar Hallbjörnsson (drupalviking), Esmeralda Tijhoff (esmoves), Fran Wyllie (franwyllie), Gayatri Tandon (gayatritandon), Nico Grienauer (grienauer), Guzman Bellon (guzmanb), Wouter Immerzeel (immoreel), Jean-Paul Vosmeer (jpvos), Karos Abdulqadir, Kwasi Afreh, Lenny Moskalyk (lenny moskalyk), Martin Anderson-Clutz (mandclu), Asim Mehta (metasim), Jordan Thompson (nord102), Rachel Lawson (rachel_norfolk), Salim Lakhani (salimlakhani), Jasper van Schelven (sch11en), Eric Wheeler (sikofitt), Soumya V (soumyavbhat), Norah Medlin (teknorah), Michael Anello (ultimike)

The Four Pillars of the Initiative 1. Courses and Teachers

Our first focus is to find, build, open source, and expand the existing Drupal curriculum. This includes everything from introductory courses to fully-fledged academic modules worth 6 ECTS points or more. One of our key goals is to empower Drupal enthusiasts, whether they’re developers or educators, to teach Drupal in a university or high school setting. To do that, we provide resources, templates, and mentorship on both content and delivery.

We explore different angles to make Drupal education relevant across disciplines: from comprehensive Drupal development tracks to specialized topics like AI, headless Drupal with React, or mastering PHP-based web applications using Drupal. In parallel, we’ve also discovered new formats to reach broader audiences, such as Drupal in a Day. Our first official session took place in May at Drupaljam in the Netherlands, gathering valuable feedback. The second is being organized at DrupalCon Vienna with 90+ students attending and a Drupal in a Day for Drupalcon Chicago is in the works.

Theme’s we are working on

• 6 ECTS academic course
• Acquia’s Drupal Course
• Drupal in a Day program
• Open Source Book of starting with Drupal “All Things Drupal”
• Guidelines for starter tracks at camps
• Onboarding material from Drupal Companies

2. Universities and Schools

Drupal has a long-standing history in the academic world, many universities and schools already use it in their digital infrastructure. So why not teach it, too? We believe Drupal should be among the course options available in IT and digital curricula. Many agencies and Drupal professionals already have connections in educational environments. By leveraging these warm relationships, we can introduce formal Drupal courses in places where there’s already familiarity with the platform.

We’re mapping out which schools and universities are already teaching Drupal, and building case studies to inspire others. We’re also exploring how students experience Drupal, and how we can create dedicated spaces for them within our community, on Drupal.org, at camps and cons, or through student programs. Think internship matchmaking, guest lectures, or introductory presentations hosted by local agencies. The goal: make Drupal education visible, accessible, and desirable in the academic world.

Material worked on

• Drupal in a Day
• Drupal courses
• List with universities and schools
• Invites to Universities and schools
• ‘Friends of Drupal’

3. Community

Our community has always excelled at sharing advanced knowledge, especially at camps and conferences. But what if we created more space for beginners at those same events? We believe every camp should include beginner-friendly tracks, clearly designed to welcome newcomers, students, and self-taught developers. We can help camps develop and deliver those tracks, including guidance on how to reach the right audience and what topics to cover.

But it doesn’t stop at camps. How do we find newcomers? How do we make them feel welcome and embed them into user groups and local meetups? Local associations and user groups can play a vital role in bridging the gap between schools, agencies, events, and education. With their support, we can make Drupal easier to access, easier to love, and easier to stay involved in.

Material worked on

• How to bring people into the community program
• How to contribute to the courses
• Organized a Drupal-in-a-day at Drupaljam
• ‘Wat can camp organizers do for beginners’

4. The Initiative

For Drupal Open University to succeed, it must align with the broader ambitions of the Drupal community, especially those focused on growth and inclusivity. That means working alongside existing initiatives, supporting our project leadership, and coordinating with other community efforts in education, contribution, and outreach.

We’re actively seeking collaboration with key stakeholders: educators, agency leaders, community organizers, and Drupal Association members. The more we align, the faster we can move. This is not just a curriculum, it’s a movement. A shared opportunity to help Drupal grow by helping others learn.

Material worked on

• Facilitating the initiative
• Presentation about the Initiative
• Awareness on Podcasts: https://talkingdrupal.com/488
• Blog: Stage of Drupal Open University
• Panel discussion Vienna: State of Drupal Open University

What’s Next

We’re building a roadmap and inviting the community to get involved in shaping it. Together, we’ll define priorities, timelines, and shared goals. This includes expanding our curriculum, scaling Drupal in a Day events, supporting beginner tracks at camps, and building networks of teachers and universities. The initiative thrives on collaboration, and now is the time to align our efforts.

Our next steps:

• Present the courses – share the why, the structure, and the vision behind it.
• Reach out – connect with universities, schools, Drupal camps, and user groups.
• Inspire others – get people excited and engaged in spreading Drupal education.
• Create and share – develop a practical “how to” for organizing a course or session.
• Build and open source – make the courses freely available and community-driven.
• Teach and organize – support those who want to teach or host a course.
• Evaluate and improve – gather feedback and evolve the material.
• Show and tell – highlight success stories and encourage others to join.

We’re also preparing a community presentation to share the current state of the initiative, including a Q&A sessions. This is your chance to get involved, ask questions, and help shape the future of Drupal education.

Final Thoughts

We are not, and do not aim to be, competitors to the many excellent learning environments, whether open or commercial, within or beyond the Drupal community. On the contrary, we want to foster the next generation of Drupal developers, and we believe that the more resources exist once people are hooked on Drupal, the better. We hope to collaborate broadly and combine strengths wherever possible.

Ultimately, we see this initiative as a contribution to the future of Drupal. As Dries Buytaert outlined in his vision for long-term growth, one key obstacle is: “Make Drupal easy to evaluate and adopt.” We believe Drupal Open University is one way to help remove that obstacle, by meeting new learners where they are and welcoming them into our community with open arms.

If you're inspired, already teaching, or simply curious to contribute, we invite you to join us. You can find our project at drupal.org/project/open_university or connect with us via Slack in the #open-university-initiative channel.

Sources

• Slack: (https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C07NZ09J18S)
• Drupal drupal.org/project/open_university

Take Away: At Tag1, we believe in proving AI within our own work before recommending it to clients. This post is part of our AI Applied content series, where team members share real stories of how they're using Artificial Intelligence and the insights and lessons they learn along the way. Building on his earlier post, How AI Helped Me Tame Our Documentation Chaos, Jeff Sheltren, Partner/CIO, shows how integrating Claude Code with Notion’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) enabled deeper analysis and smarter organization of Tag1’s internal documentation, turning a growing content challenge into a connected, intelligent knowledgebase. Supercharge Your Knowledgebase Notion is a powerful content repository providing teams the ability to write and...

This article was originally published on the BackUpScale blog.

Why It Matters

For many open-source projects and small teams, Bitnami’s charts were the default starting point for running DBs and applications on Kubernetes. When a large vendor changes course, it sends ripples across the ecosystem; it can suddenly make basic infrastructure harder or more expensive to maintain. Drubernetes v2 ensures that Drupal deployments remain fully open, self-contained, and future-proof, regardless of corporate licensing shifts. Community-driven alternatives are essential to preserve innovation and accessibility.

Background: Why Drubernetes Needed a v2

When we first built Drubernetes, the goal was simple: make it easy for various organizations to deploy Drupal on Kubernetes using Terraform for infrastructure automation. Our stack relied heavily on community-maintained Helm charts (most notably Bitnami’s MariaDB chart) for reliability and ease of integration.

But the open-source ecosystem around Bitnami has shifted dramatically.

Bitnami’s Policy Shift: From Open Access to Paywall

Bitnami historically maintained one of the best collections of open Helm charts in the cloud-native space. These charts were widely used for MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, WordPress, and many others, often forming the foundation of production workloads for startups and open-source projects.

However, following VMware’s 2022 acquisition by Broadcom and its ensuing restructuring, Bitnami’s open chart repositories were deprecated, and support for their community versions effectively ended. As covered in Fastcode’s analysis, Broadcom’s pivot toward expensive subscription-only licensing has created a domino effect, shuttering long-standing open-source pipelines and forcing projects like ours to re-architect.

For open-source maintainers like BackUpScale, continuing to use Bitnami’s images now involves licensing uncertainty, limited updates, instability and the risk of losing upstream security fixes.

Simply put: Bitnami’s stack is no longer a viable base for sustainable open-source projects with limited funding.

What Changed in Drubernetes v2

To keep Drubernetes fully open and future-proof, we replaced our only Bitnami dependency, MariaDB, with the official MariaDB Enterprise Operator.

You can review the full changelog on the 2.0.0 release page and discussion in Issue #3.

Migration Guide: Upgrading from v1.x to v2.0

While this release represents a major step forward, the migration process does require manual intervention due to the difference in architectures.

Please review the complete details in the release notes.

Looking Ahead

Drubernetes v2 isn’t just about keeping up with upstream changes. It’s about reinforcing the open-source foundations we depend on. By moving to the official Helm charts, we gain:

• Transparent governance and roadmaps
• Consistent upstream support
• Easier compliance for enterprise users
• Freedom from vendor lock-in

We’ll continue to monitor the health of the operator ecosystem and ensure Drubernetes remains reliable, free from opaque licensing traps.

For more information, visit:

• The introducing article: Want to Run Drupal in Kubernetes? Try Our New Terraform Module
• The project page: gitlab.com/backupscale/drubernetes
• The Terraform registry module: BackUpScale/drupal/kubernetes

At DrupalCon Vienna 2025, Dries Buytaert issued a clear challenge. The web as we know it is being dismantled by artificial intelligence. Drupal cannot afford to wait this out. With AI reshaping discovery, rewriting the rules of engagement, and collapsing traditional funnels, the old map of the internet no longer applies. 

Buytaert opened with a story about the Battle of Austerlitz, when a single event collapsed an empire overnight. His message was blunt. Sometimes the world changes all at once, and clinging to what used to work becomes a dangerous choice.

Instead of fearing change, he called on the Drupal community to run toward it. Like bison charging into a storm, he urged developers, agencies, and leaders to face disruption head-on. AI is not just a threat—it’s also the path forward. 

Drupal is not starting from scratch. Years of hard architectural decisions have paid off. Structured content, configuration management, and a modular design give Drupal an edge. Where other systems buckle under complexity, Drupal is already prepared.

This is not about survival. It is about leadership. With Starshot, site templates, and a renewed focus on experience and accessibility, Drupal is building tools for the next era of the web. The ecosystem is not reacting. It is advancing with purpose. The challenge is no longer whether Drupal can adapt. The question now is how quickly it can capitalize on the shift. The storm is already here. Now is the time to move straight through it.

Interview

• Building from the Ground Up: Anish Anilkumar on Sparking Local Drupal Communities

Discover Drupal

• Drupal AI Initiative Reaches $1 Million Fundraising Goal in Five Months
• Drupal UI Suite Pushes Toward 11.3: Display Builder Beta Launch and Core Contributions Near Completion

Books

• Tobby Hagler of Phase 2 Prepares to Launch Sci-Fi Novel The Grove of Tau Ceti

Events

• DrupalCon Vienna 2025: Navigating the Storm (Report on Driesnote by Alejandro Moreno López)
• "We are the Navigators Charting the Future of Open Web" - Dries Buytaert (Additional coverage of Driesnote by TDT)
• How It Feels to Be Dyslexic in a World Dominated by Written Communication (Panagiotis Moutsopoulos reflects on a session he attended at DrupalCon Vienna)
• What Speakers Are Bringing to DrupalCon Vienna 2025 - Part 2 (Speakers' highlights by TDT)
• International Splash Awards 2025 Celebrate Drupal Excellence at DrupalCon Vienna
• Women in Drupal Award Winners Announced at DrupalCon Vienna 2025
• Miffy Unveiled as DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 Mascot, Retires Franz Jozef

Organization News

• QED42's SPACE DS Theme Offers SDC-Ready Framework for Upcoming Drupal Canvas
• Council Insight Launches to Analyse User Journeys Across 392 UK Local Authority Websites
• Tag1 Launches Rebrand and New Website to Reflect Expanded Vision Beyond Drupal
• Pantheon Joins Drupal AI Initiative, Launches Gemini Integration and Magic Search Module

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Alka Elizabeth,
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

In the fifth part of his Unmanaged Files in Drupal series, Jeff Greenberg demonstrates how to enhance the custom Twig function introduced earlier to make it more versatile. By allowing developers to return either a file URL or a fully rendered image tag directly from Twig, this method streamlines theme development and showcases how to safely return HTML using the is_safe option.

Today we are talking about Drupal for Designers, site builder certifications, and getting more designers in Drupal with guests Dave Pickett & Kelly Smith. We’ll also cover Sitewide Alert as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/525

Topics

• Designing for Drupal: Challenges and Insights
• Site Builder Certification Journey
• Starting the Journey: Taking the Course and Exams
• Understanding Drupal: Post-Certification Insights
• Challenges and Complexities in Drupal
• Team Collaboration and Training Benefits
• Practical Applications and Personal Projects
• Preparing for the Certification Exam

Resources

• Talking Drupal #490 - Drupal Contrib First
• Book: Designing Content Authoring Experiences
  • Greg Dunlap
• Acquia Training: Drupal Site Building
• Design to Drupal: Bridging the Handoff

Guests

Kelly Smith - kesmith Dave Pickett - civicactions davidmpickett

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan Stephen Cross - stephencross.com stephencross

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to post and manage sitewide alerts on your Drupal website? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Sitewide Alert
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Oct 2019 by Chris Snyder (chrissnyder) of Phase2
  • Versions available: 2.2.1 and 3.0.1 versions available, the latter of which works with Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Number of open issues: 25 open issues, 9 of which are bugs against the 3.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • 4,866 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the module installed, you can create Sitewide Alerts as a new entity type
  • By default, alerts are displayed at the top of the page sitewide regardless of theme, but there is an option to exclude admin pages and an optional submodule will render the alerts in a block that you can place in a specific place that might meet your site’s needs better. There is also an option to specify that an alert should only be shown on specific pages, and can be configured to be shown and hidden at specific times
  • It’s worth mentioning that alerts are dynamically inserted into the pages by front end code that checks a custom endpoint on a configurable schedule, so new alerts can be displayed without waiting for a new page to load. And this also means that changes to the alerts won’t invalidate the cached versions of your site pages
  • You can also configure a set of styles, effectively CSS classes, that can be applied to your alerts. Sitewide Alerts are also fieldable and themable, so you have virtually unlimited ability to tailor them to the specific needs of your site
  • A while back I made my own module for implementing alerts, called Alerts, but it lacks a number of important features available in this module, particularly dynamically loading alerts as they’re published or changed
  • I also thought that Sitewide Alerts would be interesting to talk about today because one of our guests, Dave Pickett, published his own companion project called USWDS Alert that aligns the display of the alerts with the USWDS design system. So Dave, thank you for contributing this, and what can you tell us about your experience using Sitewide Alerts?

The video above explores methods for creating and managing tables in Drupal. Whether you need inline tables or complex data displays with sorting and filtering capabilities, this guide walks you through multiple approaches from basic CKEditor functionality to custom code implementation with DataTables integration.

mossbo Cloud CMS Ecosystem wins two Splash Awards 2025 oliver.berndt Sun, 10/19/2025 - 09:21 mossbo, the fully managed Cloud CMS by drunomics, won big at Splash Awards 2025, taking both the regional and international awards plus recognition as most innovative project.

Guest blog post by Angie Forson, Web and Digital Programme Lead, Southwark Council.

The Web and Digital team at Southwark Council, along with our partners at Chicken, is building an AI-powered PDF importer for the LocalGov Drupal Publication Module. Together, we’re unlocking a faster, more accessible, and more collaborative future for publishing. 

Why this matters 

Manual PDF conversion can take hours – sometimes days. With our importer, it happens in minutes – often under one minute. Multiply that across thousands of PDFs, and the time savings are game-changing. 

I’m excited about the impact this product will have — not just for our users, but also in transforming how we design, build, and create content internally. We’re shaping a future where services start with HTML-first thinking.

Evelyn Francourt, User Experience Lead 

Understanding the workflow 

We upload a PDF to the module, which will then kick-start the importing process in the background.  

The result is the HTML representation of the PDF content, which is then saved into a Drupal Publication. We can then review and publish the Publication.  

Each import process is logged so that any errors can be reviewed and fixed. 

How the technology works 

Each PDF goes through a three-step ETL process, called an “import pipeline” in the module: 

1. Extract: A PDF parser pulls content from the PDF. The default is the smalot PDF parser. 
2. Transform: The parsed content is AI converts it to properly tagged HTML with logical pagination. Currently the module uses Claude Sonnet. 
3. Save: Clean HTML pages ready to publish in Drupal 

Built for flexibility 

We can build as many import pipelines as needed, each with its own custom AI prompt. Useful for things like handling different types of PDF content or layout.

Furthermore, the pipeline uses a plugin architecture, where each step can be swapped out. Councils can use different extractors, AI models, or output to different Drupal content types to suit their needs. 

This project is a great example of AI working alongside and empowering content creators, and Drupal as a platform supports this really well.

Farez Rahman, Drupal Developer 

Agile, user-centred delivery 

We’re delivering this project the way we deliver our best work – agile and user-centred by design.  
 
We have adapted our delivery to meet the challenges of innovation design. Our team has had to continuously refine requirements and acceptance criteria to ensure the tool meets real user needs and delivers meaningful outcomes.  

Working on this AI product is an incredible experience — each day comes with new challenges, unexpected turns, and fresh opportunities to innovate. The pace of change made the whole process an absolute adrenaline rush.

Giorgi Bujiashvili, Delivery Manager

What we’ve achieved so far 

As Chicken fast-tracks development, we’ve been testing and refining prompts across a wide range of PDFs to prove what’s possible: 

• import images, URLs and linked text 
• rebuild tables with correct HTML tags 
• apply accurate heading hierarchies (H1, H2, H3) 
• remove unwanted hard returns from PDF text

We’ve also cracked the pagination challenge. Early versions mirrored PDFs page-by-page, causing awkward breaks mid-paragraph or mid-list. Now the importer processes the entire document at once and, with the right AI prompt, inserts page breaks at logical user-friendly points such as topic changes or new sections.   

Built with (and for) the community 

This project has been co-designed with content designers, developers, and the LocalGov Drupal community.

Together, we’re shaping a scalable, open-source tool that other councils can adopt, adapt, and improve.

Angie Forson, Web and Digital Programme Lead 

A leap forward in accessible publishing 

The AI PDF Importer isn’t just a tool – it’s a step change in accessible, open-source publishing for local government. Following this release, it will be open and shareable with the LocalGov Drupal community for other councils to adopt and iterate. 

If you’re interested in supporting or scaling this project, contact Angie Forson – Angie.Forson@southwark.gov.uk. Let’s change the game together.

Drupal Canvas is coming! It’ll reach stability by the end of the year, and take center stage in Drupal CMS soon after.

At Dripyard, we’ve been focused on making our components work seamlessly in both Drupal and Canvas. One of the trickier challenges was creating an image component that supports both systems while following best practices for performance and accessibility. Here’s how we did it.

Just want the code? Click here.